All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible. It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measures, names, traces and comparisons. It is that which you see before you—begin to reason about it and you at once fall into error.
It is like the boundless void which cannot be fathomed or measured. The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is no distinction between the Buddha and sentient things, but that sentient beings are attached to forms and so seek externally for Buddhahood. By their very seeking they lose it, for that is using the Buddha to seek for the Buddha and using mind to grasp Mind. Even though they do their utmost for a full aeon, they will not be able to attain to it. They do not know that, if they put a stop to conceptual thought and forget their anxiety, the Buddha will appear before them, for this Mind is the Buddha and the Buddha is all living beings. It is not the less for being manifested in ordinary beings, nor is it greater for being manifested in the Buddhas.
Huangbo Xiyun, On the Transmission of Mind, translated by John Blofeld, 1958
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Wandering Ronin's questions and commentary: This thread is a response to the challenge posed by /u/brahmmyboy; thanks for the idea. Now, according to Foyan, Zen is supposedly very simple. Reading this quote, the first two paragraphs from Huanbgo's magnum opus, we can see the simplicity of it quite directly. One of the operative lines leads to the 'action' involved in the practice of Zen:
They do not know that, if they put a stop to conceptual thought and forget their anxiety, the Buddha will appear before them, for this Mind is the Buddha and the Buddha is all living beings.
Therefore, the action involved in Zen is to put a stop to conceptual thought. Simple. We could even say that performing that action leads to an understanding of the first line, All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. Still quite simple. Now this all leads to my actual question:
Why is there even one single argument about the teachings?
I really tried to ask something that I don't already believe I know the answer to, but I failed. I have my own answers to this question already, because I can't stand the unease of not knowing things, and I try to voraciously figure out a territorial understanding regarding anything about Zen almost as soon as I hear it. Perhaps if other people here share their answers to this question, it can offer me new views and open new paths. So what are your answers to this question?
Submitted June 06, 2019 at 04:58AM by WanderingRoninXIII http://bit.ly/2Xv3IUT
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